


Continual Awareness

by deprofundisclamavi



Category: Vampire Chronicles - All Media Types, Vampire Chronicles - Anne Rice
Genre: Gen, Post QoTD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-10
Updated: 2014-10-10
Packaged: 2018-02-20 16:28:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2435420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deprofundisclamavi/pseuds/deprofundisclamavi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For Marius, oblivion was to be feared.  And in the infinity of forever, pain endured.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Continual Awareness

As soon as I felt awareness dawn behind my closed eyelids, I called to Khayman. I could feel the setting sun in my bones, in my blood, behind my closed eyes, as surely as I felt the dawning heaviness in my heart that seemed to capture each attempt at a half-formed sighs and turned them to lead in the pit of my stomach. It was only the slightest buzzing of Khayman’s reply that motivated my limbs to shift, and I rose from my bed slowly, stretching my body out with a languid fluid motion that betrayed nothing of the internal turmoil that sapped me of energy.

I could feel Khayman in my head, no words, only a flowing feeling that prickled at the back of my mind. Rather than hear his consent to my request, I could feel his approval. He would do as I bid him.

We had been through so much, and the stillness of the world around me echoed like a scream deep into my consciousness, there to remind me of our grievous course. It seemed strange to me that we had only barely escaped the end of it all, and yet the world continued to turn unaware and without thanks for the sacrifices we had all made to ensure their safety. I could hear the happy chattering of mortals spilling into my brain, tender mortals who had lost nothing, never aware that for some of us, us pitiful few watchers of time, almost everything had been cruelly snatched away. Fate was remorseless. It showed no compassion for man or woman, yet despite all I could not convince myself that I should not wallow in private self-pity.

In truth, I felt a bit of sorrow that we had escaped, that we lived, that the few of us still here thrived. I wondered how many young ones had hidden and managed to escape Akasha’s wrath, quaking in the dark, perhaps unsure that all was safe. For just a moment, I entertained the thought of calling to them, as I had under the ice, that the Queen was dead and they were safe.

But then I shrugged off my fanciful considerations with their almost parental protectiveness I had for the young ones left. It was temporary anyway, wasn’t it? Tomorrow, next week, next year, they would plentiful and annoying as always, and did I not kill them without mercy when I met them? So why display a false tenderness for them now? Let them sit in fear or rise, what was it to me?

There in the dark, surrounded by possessions of mine that seemed foreign and unwelcome, almost intrusive in their consistency; I let myself think back to what we had been through. How could it have been that only a month ago that I had walked into my frigid citadel to find the world I had known, sacrificed everything for, gone. It had been a blow indeed to find Enkil’s empty husk, nothing more than shell that had once contained knowledge so infinite. It was a grand waste, and a loss of unimaginable depth.

He had never loved me and I bore him no particular love of my own. Everything I had done had been for Akasha, my terrible Queen. Her betrayal was of the worst kind. I could not fathom or rationalize how she could have left me there, buried and in pain. Had she not saved me time and time again? Protected me? Sheltered me? Approved of me?

Had she not, even a bit, loved me? Manipulate me, certainly, but then what else would a beautiful Queen do to servants? I wondered how often I had acted as an unknowing vessel to her mind, carrying her inside of me as I experienced life and she sat frozen. Had she always been there, in my brain? How many times did she use her power over an ignorant me to guide me in the direction and to the decisions she desired? It troubled me to think about my will being anything but my own.

My sorrow was at war with my logic. The nagging logic of my brain sought to shut out my misery. Because I did not fathom all that had happened, though I understood. 

Akasha could have killed me. With nothing more than a blink of the eye, my life could have been snuffed out. But she had chosen to spare me, though her mercy was merciless. I had lain there in the freezing ice, crushed, in constant agony, but I remained alive. Akasha had, perhaps as a final act of love, only sought to delay me from stopping her. I was not to interfere in her pursuit of Lestat. Yet she was not willing to kill me to stop me. Yes, she had spared me because Lestat wished it so. What a massive blow to already shaken, bruised pride. 

I suppose I should have thanked her for that, even as my heart broke.

Her passive eyes, reflections of a heart made of stone and mine wept and bled. For her, for myself, for the loss of her, for the loss of so many of us.

I blamed Lestat. His senseless greed, his childlike need for attention, had driven her mad. I could not blame him entirely because Akasha was a woman of free will always, but his soul had called to hers through his music, through his dancing, and she saw in him the possibility of power.

A new King, a new world, made in her image.

I wished with fervor of infinite and endless measure that he had listened to my warnings and heeded my advice. Had I not felt my first hint of real worry centuries ago when she had moved for him? In that moment, a dawning dread had suffused my every cell and I only shut it out with sadness having to give Lestat up.

Yet who amongst us could have refused her hand? Had I not myself risked everything to run to her, knowing only her face and her whisper that I come? I raced across the world at her beckon call. I destroyed young, innocent immortals because she wished it so. Truly, I was no worse than Lestat and I should share some of the blame, but I had no heart yet to let myself consider such things.

After Akasha’s gruesome disposal, our academy of immortals had slowly begun to disperse back to the ends of the earth. Each night there were fewer of us residing under Maharet’s roof. I had no time to miss them— I had my own personal worries. Need and duty called, and Pandora was helpless. Such agony to watch her in her quiet pain. I felt her broken heart and bruised soul in myself as if it were my own and not hers. She had fallen to her despair and one of us needed to stay rational for the sake of the other, so I brushed aside my wounds for that time and tended to her.

Though it was almost soothing to be needed, the burden of my two thousand year old charge gone and I was without purpose and of sapped vigor. Pandora’s stillness and silence was as terrifying as it was comforting. She reminded me of Akasha, the stillness, in her remote absence. I found that I adopted an old routine once meant for another Queen. With the same easy submission on both her and my part, now I the servant, Pandora let me wash her body, cloth her, cover her body in rich jewels and perfume. 

As I brushed her hair out each night, I spoke to her in soft and private tones just as I had done with Akasha, not because I needed to tell her of the world, you see, because she knew it all already, but because it gave me comfort.

I whispered to Pandora about the things that I had read or learned about the other immortals, as I was incessantly inquisitive about each and every one of them. I do not know if Pandora heard a single word, but she sat there with the patience of our age, silky hair flowing through my fingers in such a way that my heart stopped aching if only for that short time. Sometimes I sat next to her, watching the movies put on endless view for her. I found it just as relaxing to sink into my own stillness, though I stopped as soon as I learned that watching the two of us disturbed some of the younger immortals. It was too reminiscent, our posture too frozen, like statues, that dead and cold. 

I wanted to bring warmth! Not the chill of fear and death.

I was in desperate need of comfort myself, though I would never have admitted it. Weakness was no option, not when all around me needed my strength.

There was one who saw, who seemed to see beneath my skin.

I could really only be pulled from Pandora or my books by Armand, who would come to me some time each night and request that I take a walk with him. I could not refuse his open and honest expression, his sincere and utter trust in me, his sweet respect. There were times when I looked at him and he left me dizzy or humbled. Sometimes he would consent to hold my hand, only for a few minutes. There was a startling remoteness about him that should have concerned me, but I learned that this was simply his nature. His remoteness, his distance, only made him that much more beautiful. Aren’t truly beautiful things meant to be untouchable? Unattainable? Far too lovely to be tarnished by this world. My heart beat for him, even as it crushed under misery and guilt. Would that I could absorb every pain he had felt into me and relieve him.

I told this to him once, leaning to whisper it fervently in his ear. He had looked at me, gazing up, to give me a look that bespoke his age, and wisdom far older than even I possessed. For a few seconds, I felt chastened and then foolish. When he next gave me a beguiling smile, my limbs rushed with relief and I decided that yes, love makes us all a fool and there was no shame in this.

The hardest part was his simple forgiveness of me, at least in this short gathering. I had no illusions: as time passed, his bitterness would grow anew and a great divide would form. Yet for now he was mine, he forgave me, and he let me hold his hand. It gave me great hope, his love. 

Each night I would slip my arm around Pandora and gently lift her to her feet. I was the only one who could move her body; I was the only one her body responded to and would soften for. Others had tried and found her as impossible to move as marble. With her in my arms, I would take her to rest with me, always pressing soft kisses to her neck and face, whispering old Latin to her in the darkness as our bodies grew heavy with the rising sun.

One night when I rose, I no longer felt the strong, moist pulse of Armand’s child and I knew that Armand was gone. Without even as much as a goodbye. Despite that, I was content. Armand was alive. Armand was safe. Armand had someone to love.

Then a few nights later, Pandora vanished, too. With her gone, I no longer felt compelled to stay. All things must pass. I had no reason to be concerned—though she was gone, she was alive and well. Pandora would never die without me, and so I could go.

Besides, I was no longer needed.

With my home gone, I sought residence in, of all places, Hong Kong. It was here that I set myself up for an extended isolation. I needed time to get my thoughts together. The first few nights I had spent trying to completely deny everything. When that got me nowhere, I took to roaming my new home, walking along the roof, gazing out over the balconies, finally setting up a long, powerful telescope on the one with the best view to the sky.

It was such a strange comfort to gaze into the vastness of space. I was allowed then to feel small and insignificant. 

Khayman came. I could feel his heartbeat and I wondered if that was what younger immortals felt in my presence. I felt I rather liked it.

When Khayman came into the sitting room, he had with him a thoroughly annoyed and yet curious Lestat. The command had been simple: bring Lestat to me in Hong Kong. Khayman possessed such strength that no one could stop his will, and his will had been mine. Such sweet friendship without expectation.

Before I acknowledged Lestat I put my arms around Khayman, bringing his unfathomably hard body to mine. Again, rather than be disturbed, I found myself charmed. Yes, I liked it. And so I pat his back with slow and easy motions, pressing a firm kiss to his frozen lips. It was a marvel that such life and kindness could exist in the eyes of something that looked as if it could not possibly be alive, animate.

I wondered briefly if Khayman possessed enough strength to kill me—if with his bare hands he could snuff out my life better than any sun or fire could.

“Don’t ask it,” he said gravely but warmly, and I found myself laughing without a care. So utterly charmed at his seamless and effortless ability to see into my mind. Such power! It intoxicated me, and rather than feel inferior to him, it made me enjoy his presence all the more. Compared to Khayman, I was but a child. To others I was hard, immortal, powerful, disturbing in my whiteness, but not to this one, who could likely feel so much human life still teeming in my limbs.

“Heart,” he corrected, and his cold breath grazed my cheek and ear and I felt myself give a small shiver before all joy sapped from my body as quickly as it had come.

“Thank you for this,” I said before I pulled away and turned to face Lestat.

Khayman said nothing, but walked away and out. His footsteps, yes, those careful steps, I heard them leave. 

“Marius,” Lestat spoke from directly behind me, his body a pulsating reminder of the immeasurable distance between us now, more my doing than his. “Why am I here? I would have come on my own if you called me.”

“Yes, I know,” I was gathering the momentum to look into his eyes, “But would you have come tonight, or at your leisure?”

“Fair point,” Lestat conceded, and there was that insufferably charming laugh of his, which despite myself I found made me still smile and want to laugh too.

When I turned, I saw a hint of fear in his eyes. Not fear of me, or what I may do—Lestat knew I would do nothing to hurt him, and even if he knew I intended to harm him, it was not in Lestat’s nature to turn away from danger. However, I presented none.

What was this fear, though? I tilted my head and gazed curiously and deeply into his eyes, and he let me with a warm patience, saying nothing as my eyes swept through him.

“Ah, I see,” I finally said, “You think I hate you.”

I did. But I loved him desperately, too.

“I imagine this is what a father might feel. Angry, disappointed,” I was candid and he accepted my frank feelings without bearing a wound, “But no less resolved in his unconditional love.” And after a moment and a slight smile, “You really cannot help yourself, can you?”

“No,” and there was that charming smile again, so perfect, equal parts innocent and devilish. His face found itself clasped gently between my two hands.


End file.
